


Lost Causes

by PrettyArbitrary



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Catholic Jack Morrison, Found Poetry, Friendship, Gen, Omnic Crisis, War is hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: Jack keeps a St. Jude medal on the chain with his dog tags, tied into his boot laces.  When he signed up for the army, his mom embraced the concept of care packages. The envelope with St. Jude in it was sitting right on top of the first one when he opened it.He’d called her to let her know he got it, and to tease her about getting the wrong saint. “Michael’s the patron for soldiers.”“He’s for when you need him, dear,” she'd replied. He never did figure out if she’d sent it on purpose or just refused to admit she got it wrong.
Relationships: Ana Amari & Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes & Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison & Reinhardt Wilhelm
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	Lost Causes

Jack keeps a St. Jude medal on the chain with his dog tags, tied into his boot laces. When he signed up for the army, his mom embraced the concept of care packages. The envelope with St. Jude in it was sitting right on top of the first one when he opened it.

He’d called her to let her know he got it, and to tease her about getting the wrong saint. “Michael’s the patron for soldiers.” 

“He’s for when you need him, dear,” she'd replied. He never did figure out if she’d sent it on purpose or just refused to admit she got it wrong.

Most people don’t notice it, and wouldn’t care if they did. He can usually tell Catholics because they give him a funny look. Gabe never mentions it, but Jack knows he knows. His family's Catholic as hell even if he renounced.

Of the strike team, Reinhardt’s the only one who brings it up. He flops into a chair by Jack, ignoring its groan of protest, and then looks down at the boot Jack has crossed over his opposite knee. He waves toward it with a hand half the size of Jack's chest. “You are devout, then?”

Jack looks at his foot in confusion. “Eh? Oh!”

Reinhardt apparently considers confused grunting to be enough of a reply. “But is St. Jude not the patron saint of lost causes? Have you so little hope for our endeavor, my friend?”

Caught up with the conversation now, Jack bounces his foot to send the tags swinging and laughs. “No, my mom sent it to me. I’m the lost cause.”

Reinhardt guffaws and slaps Jack on the back so hard he skids right out of his chair.

***

“The ‘Omnic Crisis,’ people are calling it.” Jack takes a swig of overheated water from his canteen, then offers it to Ana. She waves him off. He laced it with rum, just enough to give it a bit of flavor that isn’t ‘aluminum’, but she’s Muslim. She doesn’t drink. He mutters an apology; he keeps forgetting. She waves that off too, and turns back to her scope.

“They’re frightened,” she says. “It lets them forget. ‘Crisis’ sounds less like ‘war for survival.’”

They’re holed up in a sniper’s nest in San Bernardino, overwatching for a convoy carrying a bomb that’s supposed to win this battle for them. Normally this is Ana’s gig, but they’ve got too many angles of approach in this urban sprawl, so Gabe’s stuffed Jack up here with her for extra eyes. The rest of the team is on the ground, covering alleys and doing recon to make sure nothing sneaks up and blows up their plan in their faces.

“Repositioning to Nest 3 in one minute,” Ana says into the comms. Convoy’s almost to the corner, and then they’ll have to move to the next in the chain of vantage points they prepped for this mission. She signs off after Gabe’s acknowledging mumble, then frowns at Jack. “Nothing yet. I don’t like it.”

“Gonna get heavy further in,” Jack agrees.

The lock of hair that always hangs in her face swings with Ana’s huff. “You and Reinhardt and Gabriel. None of you have any fear for yourselves. I’m the one who has to make sure you all get home alive to your loved ones.”

Jack bounces his foot to make his tags jingle. “Don’t want to disappoint my mom,” he says. “But there are worse things. Like not having loved ones alive to go home to.”

She grunts and looks down to fuss with the strap on her rifle. “We’re going to lose this city,” she says quietly. Her accent shapes the words like cut stone.

Jack edges out around the corner to make sure the way is clear. He takes the opportunity not to answer immediately. An American city. The thought sits like lead in his gut. But they’ll have to get used to things like that if they’re going to win this. “We’re going to sacrifice this city,” he corrects, as he waves Ana past him. “And it’s going to save about twenty million people. That’s not a loss.”

She lifts her rifle and sights on a suspicious glint he hadn’t even noticed. Her even, slow sigh is interrupted by a _CRACK_ , and then the familiar roll of her shoulder as she chambers a fresh round. “Eyes forward, Jack.”

***

Reinhardt is the walking version of one of those huge, over-decorated pewter beer steins people buy to prove to themselves just how incredibly German their German tourist experience was. Between that and the armor, it can be easy to forget there’s actually a person in there.

But Liao is dead, and Reinhardt is drunk. 

To be fair, they’re all at least a little drunk. They just survived a total wreck of a battle and lost one of their own, and since they got back to base and debriefed, their first day of downtime’s been basically a wake in her honor. 

But while the others have wrapped it up, one by one, and gone staggering off to find their beds, Reinhardt just keeps pouring himself another drink. He’s got a ghost in his eyes, and Jack knows the look of a man who’s trying to drown it with booze.

So when the room’s gone nearly silent and empty, Jack waves off the questioning look Gabriel shoots him and waves him out the door, and slides into a seat next to his big friend. 

Gabe tries to be a good commander—and he is. He tries to be there for his people. But he always says he’s better at offering comfort in the form of shooting the bastards who caused the problem. Besides, he and Reinhardt chafe each other like sand up your swim shorts.

Jack has a bad moment when Reinhardt begins to sway in his direction. It feels like a building’s threatening to fall on him. There aren’t many people who can make Jack feel small, but Reinhardt’s at the top of the list.

But instead of toppling, Reinhardt sags into a confidential slump, like an overhanging cliff about to whisper a secret.

“I wasn’t meant to be here, you know.” His voice is closer to subdued than Jack thought it could go. “It was my commander, von Adler, who received the call. But he died.” Reinhardt flattens his unreasonably huge hands on the table and looks down at them. “He didn’t need to die. He was fixing my mistake. I got him killed. My recklessness. My arrogance.”

Jack’s never seen the big guy lost in his head before. It feels so wrong. Reinhardt’s got a keen grasp of the need for morale in this war. The big personality really is him, but he wears it with deliberation. Because the people around him need heroes, and he’s strong enough to be one for them.

Jack puts a hand on the towering shoulder. Trying to just be there with him when he doesn’t know what to say. Reinhardt’s normally easy to boost up, on the rare occasions he gets dejected. But right now, Jack’s got a feeling the usual praise and easy encouragements would be misplaced.

“Do you think Liao’s death was your fault?” he finally asks.

The leonine head rocks uncertainly. “If Balderich had been here, she would be alive.”

Jack pushes gently at his shoulder, shaking him. “Hey. You know you can’t think like that. We don’t have what ifs in war. It’s just the options we see and the options we take.”

Reinhardt turns to look solemnly down at him. “I am our team’s shield, Jack. That is my purpose here. I cannot reverse engineer our enemies to detect their secret weaknesses, or infiltrate their systems for the information that will save the world. My one duty is to protect those who can. To stand between them and our enemies and see them to their goal.”

In something like this, even Reinhardt is small. It’s not a fun thought. Jack knows the same urge Reinhardt does: to be able to _do_ something. To have the power to make a difference. But that’s not how this works. Reinhardt is right: people like him and Jack, they’re just the soldiers. 

Jack leans over to bump shoulders with the big guy. “You and me, Reinhardt. We don’t have the power to stop things like this from happening. But we’ll see them through, to do what they need to do. And if one of us falls…” 

Reinhardt turns to look at him, brow furrowed in protest.

“If one of us falls,” Jack repeats with emphasis, “then it’ll be like you with Balderich.” The thought jogs something in his memory, something his dad said to him once when Jack was a kid and they were mourning his granddad. In Jack’s head, he’s still a ruddy-faced old man with a fishing hat and an indomitable air of pride in his grandson. Jack’s never met anyone who believed in him like his grandfather did. “We’re never alone. The people who came before us keep right on pushing us forward. Liao brought us as far as she could. Now we go on from here.”

Reinhardt’s flowing blond hair knots up around his fingers as he rubs his hands over his face--a bit like watching two glaciers slide over a mountainside. With his eyes covered, he nods.

Jack looks at him thoughtfully for a second, then decides Reinhardt probably doesn’t want anyone to see him cry. With one more comforting pat to the shoulder, he gets up and goes.

***

San Bernardino is burning. It’s pretty, from this far away; like the bonfires Jack and his friends used to light in the summer and party around all night long. 

A day ago, he was in the middle of it, and it was Hell.

“It’s not really anything new for it,” Gabe says. His voice is an ugly mess from smoke inhalation and failed humor. His expression cracks right after his voice does. “We’re supposed to stop this. How am I supposed to do this, Jack?”

The battle was godawful. A stumbling, clownish nightmare that wouldn’t end. A black and corrosive endless night, gouging at his eyes and clawing his throat while he fought, blind and choking. People dying, screaming, killing right next to him but he couldn’t even see them. The saving grace had been that the enemy was as blind as they were in all that smoke and ruin. The omnics had just kept coming, wave after wave of them flooding out from the omnium nearby, but nobody could find each other reliably to kill each other. 

It was Gabe’s plan. Evacuate the city and then bring the whole damn place down on top of the San Bernardino Freeway and the omnic army marching along it toward the heart of the Southland. It worked. The humans won, and it took out so many of the omnic forces that it opened a shot at the omnium and its God Program. But it was a literal pyrrhic victory. By the time the fires started by the battle burn down, there won’t be much left. Fighting the omnics takes everything they can muster; they don’t have the infrastructure or spare resources to fight wildfires.

The crack is in Gabe’s eyes, too. He’s the hardest man Jack’s ever met; he never falters where anyone can see him. But this is part of his home, and he’s watching it burn. He also hasn’t slept in three days.

Jack purses his lips. After a second, he turns and leans against the railing that runs around the edge of the roof to reach for his boot.

Gabe raises his eyebrows. “What're you doing?”

Jack undoes the laces till he can work the St. Jude medal off the chain holding his dog tags. He holds it out to Gabe. “Take it. I don’t need it. I have you.”

“God, Jack, that’s lame.” But he blinks suspiciously a few times when he takes the medal.

The next day, Jack sees it hanging with his tags.


End file.
